Aperture Harmonics moved into J105934, better known as Nova, on January 1st, 2010. We moved from our previous home, named Exodus, into a C6 Magnetar in the hopes that living in the biggest, toughest, least forgiving wormhole space would hone our skills and that we could become the top wormhole space corporation.

A few months after moving in, we did it. We evicted our top competition, CCRES, and were widely considered the top wormhole space entity. We got in a couple of small fights with Rooks and Kings, and they had so much fun losing to us, they made us an awesome recruitment video.

In 2011, things started to change, and not for the better. We expected other wormhole entities to stand up and challenge us directly, but instead we saw the rise of wormhole “coalitions”. W-space fleets went from 10 to 20 to 100 and now even to 200+ pilots. AHARM faced a difficult choice. We could either grow our corp/alliance in order to try to compete with the larger and larger fleet sizes, or we could ally ourselves with other w-space groups, and become a part of a system that was starting to look a lot more like the nullsec political system many of us fled to w-space to escape. To many people, even many of the people within AHARM, those appeared to be the only two options, but we, as always, don’t like to do things the obvious way. If we weren’t going to change AHARM to suit the status quo in C6/C5 wormhole space, we decided instead to change where we hunt.

A brief logistical interlude

As those of you who have lived in w-space for a while know, you accumulate a lot of stuff in your wormhole. Once we decided to move, the first step was to figure out how much stuff we had. The answer was, frankly, staggering. After 3 and a half years in Nova, we had over 120,000,000 m3 of items, including POS mods. We had nearly 3,000 ships (not counting shuttles and newbie ships), and over 100 capitals. We had some 50 POSes to take down as well. Based on the last time we moved, we thought the process would take as long as 2 months. Instead, we did it all in just 3 weeks. The entire corp pitched in, and fleets of Iteron V’s (thanks CCP for making the industrial skill requirement changes!) poured out of every highsec exit we found. Capitals were quickly evacuated to nullsec and lowsec, and moved to a new staging system. To track our progress, we built a web page using the EVE API full of charts and stats about what needed to be moved. Here is a screenshot of one of the charts:

A New Home

Of course, while most of the corp was moving out, several of our officers were looking for a new home. We have a couple of different systems picked out, and once we are settled in, we will talk more about why we chose the place we chose. Of course, before we can move in, the people who are living there need some help moving out…

Members of EVE corporations spend a lot of time together. A LOT of time together. After a while, all of that time together can generate intense bonds of friendship, loyalty, and trust.

It can also produce ridiculous moments of hilarity. Like when a handful of corpmates* for some reason decide to sing part of Bohemian Rhapsody. And someone records the performance. And someone passes that recording along to someone who updates the official AHARM blog.

So after Exhale. came into Nova earlier today, people formed up to skirmish, and nothing came of it (except a certain someone making bank on nanite paste), we were looking for more pew. That meant that when psycher announced on comms that his Cheetah was almost close to die to an Arazu and a CLoki who had attempted to kill a different Cheetah, we formed up in glorious jubilation.

Our ~ELITE PVP FORCE~ of Rawstyle’s Maller, my Talos and pshycer’s Falcon formed up on the K162 that connected Nova to the C5 Black Hole in question. Their Loki jumped in and cloaked up. psycher was keeping eyes in the C5 as our fleet slowly climbed to around 8. Cerulean was contacted by old birdwatchers in HRDKX and told that we could expect a fight. Soon enough, psycher announced that 3 or 4 Nagas, 5 or 6 Talos, and a Deimos were landing on the Nova hole in the C5. We formed up with a Rapier and an Arazu on the hole. We heard WH activations, and Rawstyle began to burn his hero Maller, who hath tanked Hathrul, away as the Nagas and Talos came for him.

“Oh shit, they’re really close,” came the soothing British purr of Sir Nigel Peppercock, First Lord of the Admiralty, as he was pointed and approached by the evil forces of HRDKX. Just in time, the Rapier decloaked and webbed Peppercock’s closest pursuer as the fleet landed. HRDKX warped out to a celestial with most of their fleet, but one Talos jumped out, leaving valuable Infiltrator IIs behind, while a Naga was quickly dispatched.

We established a HIC on the WH and set our range. The fleet had climbed to over 10 now, as people in AFK channels noticed goings on. The HRDKX fleet landed again, close to us this time, and I called the warp-out. Most of our guys made it out but Darksheer got caught. At this point, Sonic had joined us in a second Arazu and the recons spread out. Having established our field control, we came back in and aligned at half speed, hoping that HRDKX would be emboldened by the trade and return. We could not force them to fight, and trying to tackle them with the Recons was risky and could quickly turn the ISK war (and the fight) against us. Just as we were debating bringing in something brick tanked and bait-ey, HRDKX blew up my close d-scan. We cycled MWDs and recons decloaked as the hostile gang landed 40km from our BCs. Shakor was unfortunate enough to get the primary and went down sooner than you can say “yellow box,” but we returned the favour. We now clearly had the upper hand and enemy DPS was slowed to a standstill. Points were spread and webs landed as their BCs started going down almost as soon as they were called primary. The shiniest of prizes was the Deimos, who seemed out of place with the other nano ships. We exchanged “gf” in local and went about looting with a Legion, hoping he might tempt HRDKX in for another run. Alas, they proved wise, and we gave them free passage from Nova in return for the passage granted us from their system months ago and for bringing a fight.

This might have been the end of it, but I was convo’d by the HRDKX FC and was told that if we were bored, a 5v5 cruiser brawl could be arranged next door. We eventually settled on 7v7, at 0 on the sun, combat and attack cruisers only. AHARM arrived in style, fielding MIGHTY SPACEDONGUES (GALLENTE MASTER RACE) while the aggressors came in inferior Ruptures and feeble Caldari ships which do not deserve naming. Mighty Robert was felled first for our side, for he was Frapsing and so by the rules of EVE, he must die first. I was next, but not before using my l33t Medium Blaster Spec 5 skills to top the damage on their second-to-die cruiser. We traded blows for a few minutes, but AHARM eventually emerged one cruiser ahead. The DPS difference grew and we lost less as they lost more until we were ultimately victorious. Three SPACE DONGUES survived the brawl. And HRDKX, next time,

[05:56:16] Domania > 1v1 carrier fight?

Carriers at the sun B)

Now for some corps, this could be enough, and I did have chili cooking to do for AHARM Haus food night so I went off to the kitchen. A night of quiet reflection, however, on the space violence I had done that day was not to be had.

[03:35:25] NoHo > just rolled into you fro a c4
[03:35:30] Noho > they have 2 caps out of pos

Welp. I jumped onto NoHo comms as Rawstyle herded AHARM pilots into armour T3s. The situation was that a small, 5-man gang of Vaga, Astarte, Heretic, and Legion had just killed an Orca in a C4, presumably as it closed the connection into Polaris. The Cataclysmic-dwellers then assigned fighters from a Nidhoggur and Chimera to chase NoHo around, but the WH gods frown upon the bullshit that can take place in C5s, as 10+ carriers circle jerking is super fucking stupid. Thus the wormhole gods deemed it fit to connect the offending C4 to the last system the inhabitants would ever want to hit…Nova.

The NoHo pilots joined our fleet, and we hopped onto their comms. We formed up on the new K162 to the C4 with 2 Guardians, a HIC and maybe a half dozen T3s. We advised NoHo to set up on a safespot as opposed to a WH, unsure whether T2 Corporation would engage on a WH when they couldn’t see the other side. NoHo’s scout reported that the Chimera was moving as a T2C Tengu landed on their gang at the safe. Moments later he reported warps from a Loki and the Chimera. We weren’t about to fuck this up, so we waited until the last possible moment – until T2C was in too deep. The carrier and Loki landed, and a Pilgrim decloaked and joined the party. NoHo bubbled up and spread points, and we piled in, having at least 5 different people bookmark the return wormhole in 3 separate bookmark folders.

As we landed, I saw that the Pilgrim was in deep armour with structure bleed and was being repped by the carrier, so I called the Tengu primary, hoping he may not have a lock from the non-triaged carrier. Our DPS was fairly high and the 34% hit to his local booster would have almost certainly meant death to the Chimera…and if he was half-competent, he would know it too. The Tengu danced in and out of deep armour until we overloaded and he popped, despite his impressive Warp Core Stab II tank. The Pilgrim was next, and his local armour tank did little more to save him than the Tengu’s stabs. The Loki stood a little while longer, but his armour tank and the incoming shield reps didn’t mesh and he eventually fell to our damage. We took care to quickly pod out all of the support pilots, though we weren’t initially sure about that choice. On the one hand, tackled caps are the best way to keep support coming. On the other, if these guys all had carriers, we could quickly run up against a tank we could not break. Since the C4 mass limitations prevented us from bringing in a dread, we decided to play it safe and score the guaranteed Chimera kill.

As the Loki went down, a lovely surprise presented itself: a lonely Nidhoggur landed at the edge of our bubble. We quickly started bumping him away from his bro while maintaining a HIC bubble on the Nid and a dictor bubble on the Chimera. As the Nidhoggur lost his shields, we noticed that he wasn’t running any active hardeners. Could it be that these guys had brought an armour tanked carrier to save a shield tanked carrier? We would soon find out as the Nid’s armour started to bleed…and then he had shields again. In a last desperate attempt to save his rep buddy, the Chimera had gone into triage. This move was exactly what we’d been waiting for. The Nid’s impressive rep amount bonus and the Chimera’s inherent shield resists meant that the Nidhoggur should have been the easier target, as we would be hard pressed to break a Chimera supported by a Nidhoggur with even 2 shield transfers. In triage, however, despite a potentially impressive tank depending on pimp fit, the Chimera was the much easier prey, as he would be weakened by the aforementioned local rep penalty from the Cataclysmic. Zelfor was left to point the Nid, and we burned our T3s back the 40km across space to sit on the Chimera’s chest and smash its face.

Unfortunately, the NoHo hero ‘dictor was now popped by the Nidhoggur’s fighters (somehow), after having tanked 28k damage (mad props Guardians). A second HIC rustled up from Nova and hurried to take over but he wasn’t needed. The Chimera initiated self destruct while in deep structure and was dead before he could kill himself. The Nidhoggur now stood no chance at all and succumbed to our space boat violence.

[04:02:09] Tasardur > can you dont pod me?

The answer was, of course, no. I would have considered a ransom in a smaller gang but with 15 people, there was little point. Having satiated our video-game violence and MTV sex-driven urges, we told NoHo to loot the Faction/Deadspace mods, brought in haulers from Nova for the larger cap mods that they couldn’t carry, and then escorted them down our chain into K-space, where they passed safely into Hek and out of our story.

All in all, a very successful Wednesday night/Thursday morning for a corp that is still fail-cascading. Good work to NoHo for finding those carriers and thanks to the WH gods for connecting us to the bliss of carrier kills. Also, a very special thanks to Tal for providing the Thoraxes that allowed us to win GLORIOUS HONOUR for AHARM in the cruiser brawl with HRDKX. gfgf to everyone and as Taylor knows best, you can’t let little things like fail-cascades or break-ups bring you down.

So there I am playing Tanks with two other AHARM members and my new roommate (we’re pretty good.) Anyway, we see a call on Skype for pilots to log in to gank a cap in a site next door. We log in…and start patching.

This is me IRL patching my client and trying to get online. Meanwhile, we listen in on comms as the fleet gets big and lands on the hostile Moros belonging to Friends of Honor (member of COVEN). Sounds like he’s dropping fast and now the only thing left appears to be picking up the killmai-he disappeared?

Turns out this kid has logged off before we were able to aggress him and he vanishes from space with about 10% armour remaining. We check his info and realize that these guys have logged caps on us on two other occasions. I make a (half joking) remark about these guys buying themselves an eviction and make a mental note to talk to corp about the possibility, what with it being midweek and all.

…but I forgot that Robert was present. Everything is bigger in Texas, including heroically impetuous decisions. Our GLORIOUS LEADER, with the wrathful voice of those with almighty power called out “GET ME THE EVICTION ORCA.” With that, we tweeted for more people, and lo, people logged in and we shoehorned an Archon, a Nag, the Orca, and a respectable subcap fleet to meet up with the Moros and T3/Guardian gang in the target system.

As we anchored our staging tower, we took note of the situation. FOH had 2 Revelations, a Moros, a Thanatos and an Archon along with two Orcas at their Minmatar Large. They never, however, attempted anything except to load up a few industrials and log them out.

We then reinforced a Caldari Small and took a closer look at the defences on the Large. We saw that there were more than half a dozen large autocannons, two neuts, a few webs and points, a respectable number of medium guns and a bunch of jammers. At this point I was quite nervous. We didn’t know how many people FOH was able ping and scramble, given that the corp was ~60 people. If they rolled two or three dreads to the edge of their shields and then got good with their gunning, they could easily put our dreads in danger. So I spoke up and advised that we should wait it out until we were able to reinforce. Sonic agreed with me, adding that I was incredibly handsome and that he loved me – which had nothing to do with the situation at hand but was nice to hear regardless. So Robert reined in his insatiable rage and we instead reinforced the Caldari Small and starting cycling holes from Nova. At this point I left for work.

~Cue Musical Interlude~

~End Musical Interlude~

I came back from work and it turned out that we had moved three additional dreads into system. Now we’re talking! Hostile numbers had also dropped down to only 2.

Intelligence reported that enemy fire would be random and light, and it was…at first.

There were 4 groups of guns on the tower and our dreads landed at the first, then the second, and incapped them all. Then the call was made to engage the tower directly while our subcaps continued to work on the mods. Almost immediately all fire on the tower switched to Tal’s carrier (possibly because he’d lost a scanning ship to it earlier and it remembered his scent…) while our our 2 Guardians reported regular jams landing on them.

At this point, a mistake was made. It may have been a case of “too many cooks” or a miscommunication about the amount of damage and jams incoming, but the carrier and dreads stayed at one side of the tower and the subcaps (now with 3 Guardians) landed on the opposite side of the POS to knock out the remaining jammers and the warp disruption batteries. This time the jams were focused very well on all of our Guardians and the carrier was too far out of range to provide reps. A Proteus came under fire from the remaining guns and began to take a lot of damage. As fate would have it, just as our fourth Guardian landed, and just as the tower was moments away from being reinforced, and just as the only point holding him was about to be incapped, the semi-glass cannon Proteus went down. We were sad.

In the words of the late (and pretend) Captain Deladier Rake, “Somebody made a big goddamn mistake!”

Regardless of our losses, the tower was reinforced, the static was crit and bubbled, and we had noted the reinforcement timers.

And then we realized we had a problem. It was Tuesday night (US TZ), and the Russian prime time was rapidly approaching. We still didn’t know how many people were in this hole and if these Romanians were able to close their static, they could either evac all their assets or bring in a huge fleet completely unbeknownst to us (5 dreads is a tempting prize for anyone, especially without the risk of hotdrop). So how were we supposed to maintain hole control throughout the night until our Euros log in after work?

ENTER AHARM HOUSE.

AHARM House exists at a classified location in Canada. It is full of top secret beer, hockey, and Big Gulp cups of pop, and also of Siri, pshycer, and myself. We committed to camping the target system for as long as it took for our Euros to log in and relieve us.

NIGHT ONE – THE FIRST NIGHT

We took over as our spacefriends logged off. A few promised us they would be back on after downtime. The only company we had was Harry (who is an honourary member of AHARM House for his sacrifices in this op). We split cov-ops eyes around the system and had probes out to ensure that nothing snuck out. Despite threats earlier to follow us around system in a tower, the locals began to self destruct their ships. They started with the industrials, Noctises and Itty 5’s, and then moved on to their better PvP ships.

We continued to try to negotiate for the release of some of these ships, but to no avail. They blew them up one by one, including a gas mining Megathron. I then attempted to open diplomatic relations with them but my demeanor was apparently not gentle enough for their special snowflake souls.

They just wouldn’t stop SD’ing ships. As we continued into the night, a Thanatos piloted by Zil warped out of the POS to a planet. We ran a quick probe for him but were unable to nab him before he logged out. We anchored a bubble at his location and continued to enforce hole control.

At one point, psyhcer left the system to go and try to kill a Drake down the chain. Instead, he got the Noctis that showed up to salvage. As a veteran spite camper, he waited til the guy had salvaged ALL OF THE LOOT before pouncing. The best part, as you may have noticed, was that this kid had 3 stabs – meaning he could have warped out anytime he wanted. Returning from this C3, pshycer called out that a Tengu was sitting on the C5/C3. He tackles it and I left my Tanks match (abandoning what could have been a very good game) to go join him…again through a crit hole. As I was in warp, a Blackbird landed and jammed pshycer out, allowing the Tengu to escape. The BB went down and we returned to the target system, satiated after killing carebears and ECM ships. We then took back up our positions on the camp and busied ourselves by watching Band of Brothers and Archer.

The night progressed slowly, with pshycer and I drifting off to bed about an hour apart (1400 and 1500 EVE respectively). A few people logged into Nova and started trying to collapse in but struck out (this was the theme of almost all our chain collapsing that week trying to get a route into the target system).

Siri, however, stayed online. In total, he camped that wormhole for about 23 HOURS STRAIGHT (the first 6 hours were our setting up in and reinforcing the system). While he was alone, the dudes next door (presumably mad that we had killed them carebearing a bit earlier, jumped a 100mn AB Osprey into the target system, closing the hole. Siri was able to dispatch this threat quickly and without incident. He then realized this meant that there was a new static and batphoned for Tal to quickly scan it down. They sat a Devoter on the hole until a new bubble could be anchored.

Harry continued to come and go as he was able to and finally, Siri was relieved at around 2000 EVE by Robert.

NIGHT TWO – BEING THE SECOND

This night took on a much more somber tone, despite being joined by a few reinforcements from Nova, including my good spacebro pierre.

We had just finished caging their POS, but they had enough energy to try to escape. One of their pilots got into a Sleipnir and began to creep toward the edge of the POS shields. He emerged and started gunning down one of our bubbles. We had a Proteus on him immediately. He retreated to the edge of the shields but continued to poke every now and again. A few of us positioned ourselves to get as close as we could to him the next time he tried. When he did, we all pounced. The Sleipnir dropped to about 10% structure before just barely crossing the shields and dropping our locks. He tried one more time (15 minutes later when he’d repped up his armour and structure) and this time Harry joined in with a fantastic bump. Again, however, the Sleipnir barely got into the cover of his shields before we were able to kill him.

This near-death experience appeared to be the last straw for Friends of Honor and when 3 other members logged in, they began to SD their ships once again, even killing their own Revelation. At this point, all negotiations and diplomatic channels were closed and we began to berate them mercilessly.

Harsh, perhaps, but I have no tolerance for people SDing ships and logging out. They easily could have brought us a fight when we first entered system or when we were anchoring our tower. They talked tough the first night about bringing the fight and said that the cavalry was coming. Now they had realized it was too late, that nobody was coming to save them and they chose to take this way out. If I thought I was mad then…

4 hours later, four pilots logged in. An Archon, two Orcas and a Damnation landed in the POS, immediately accelerated in different directions at 10km/s+, and cloaked as soon as the exited the shields. They had reset the password on the tower and bounced themselves clear of our bubble, then cloaked up and relied upon their momentum to carry them free of the contain. We landed all our subcaps on the tower (being previously on the WH) and spread out, dumping drones. Given that they had, however, all bounced in different directions, we had a hard time giving any solid vectors and the sheer volume of 6 T2 bubbles meant that there was no way for us to decloak them barring a stroke of pure luck. At one point the Damnation decloaked 80km below their tower, and I managed to lock him and get a gun on him before he warped. We bounced to the planet he looked to be heading to but were unable to land before he cloaked up.

I was pretty mad.

This was the end of all resistance in the target system, barring local smack. When we expressed our disgust for the tactics they had just used, they came back with the most predictable of responses…

Well, you heard it here first guys, we’re doing it wrong. Catching officer is more profitable than C6 capital escalations. Pack it in and shut down Nova, we’d best join a pet train and beg for space somewhere.

Shortly after this, the first small tower came out of reinforced. Robert and I one-cycled it in a pair of dreads and AHARM House went to bed, leaving the relief forces to hold down the fort. We woke back up for the main tower a few hours later. Speaking for myself (and likely for pshycer, Siri and Harry), we were glad to see the end of the damn thing.

All in all, the loot from the eviction wasn’t great but it was never expected to be. This wasn’t about loot, it was about the principal that AHARM does not approve or forgive the logging of capitals under fire nor of carebearing in WH space without the spine to protect your turf. These guys have earned a personal KOS anywhere in WH space from me, and I’ll be only too glad to see them kicked back to k-space where this sort of shit flies.

In summary, thanks to everyone who logged in to make this thing a success. In particular, Siri, psyhcer and Harry who pulled some long hours midweek to minimize the possibilities of our targets escaping. Thanks to Zara, pierre, and everyone else who chain collapsed from Nova, even if we didn’t get lucky enough to connect with the target system this time around. Thanks also go to everyone who helped with the probing and logistics. It’s often under-appreciated, but actually the most important part of the op.

So after we wrapped up our nano shenanigans down the chain in the C2, we regrouped in Nova to rep up some armor/structure on a few ships. The mood was cheerful, and I was getting ready to send us back down the chain to Feythabolis. Suddenly, someone mic’d up and said “You realize Exhale has a 20 man fleet in Nova right?”

“Say what?!” Order everyone to scramble back to POS and ask for eyes on that fleet. We re-ship to T3 armour DPS and Sonic shotguns triage. We also get on the phone to NorCorp to get back up the chain, bringing our numbers up to something that we were comfortable engaging Exhale. with, assuming they had more than just 20 (which is normal for them). We also sent a CTA to further bolster our ranks.

Now, there’s some backstory here. NorCorp connected to Nova from Polaris (NorCorp home system) earlier that day. They had an op/eviction/something down our chain and wanted to use it. We said “of course” and temp blued them so there wouldn’t be any accidents (I totally almost shot a blue too, I really wanted to). Meanwhile, unbeknownst to us, Starbridge connected to Exhale. Then, as fate would have it, Exhale connected to Polaris. Now I wasn’t there but I think the dialogue was something like this.

An Exhale fleet with less than 10 Guardians? So where’s the rest of it? Eyes in Polaris report the rest of the fleet. 6 or so Guardians along with another group of T3s and a bubble up on their connection to Polaris. Total numbers were probably around 30 or so, I don’t actually remember. Once NorCorp, along with a few Temnava guys hits Nova, I call a joint warp to Polaris (we had hopped onto NoHos (NorCorp) comms by now). We land an they start to shoot one of us, but Sonic and Robert land and try to rep. The lock time is slow so one of them drops triage and lands his rep. Meanwhile we drop an Oneiros and a Talos quick. The rest of their fleet has landed in Polaris but they all jump out. A single Guardian who had burned off the hole was left behind to die.

We follow and I call the hold cloak. We wait in silence. NoHo had slipped a Phobos onto their side of the hole and Exhale. now found themselves inside of it. A NoHo triage carrier landed and we all decloak and I begin to call their Guardians primary with a few quick breaks in between for an ECM Tengu and a Falcon. We chew through their Logi with very little problems, having a lot of webs to hold them down and having them inside of 10km to start with helped a lot, I think. Plus Polaris is a Magnetar as well and we all know the story with C6 mags and AHARM.

Regardless, midway through this fight, triage is keeping up with incoming damage and anyone who is getting too low is jumping out back into Nova, where there was a bubble, a dread and two carriers waiting. A scout announces that a Starbridge gang is inbound with Bhaalgorns and something about capitals, either an Archon and 3 Moroses or just the latter. I was really busy calling targets so I’m not entirely sure what was going on but it was just more shit to paint our KB green with as far as I cared. With almost all their logi dead, we start shredding their Legions. Suddenly, a pack of wild Russians appears! Two Bhaalgorns a few more Guardians and some more T3s land. Like a rural Canadian street after a car passed by, it was game on!

We go straight for the Bhaal and he starts to drop but it’s going really slowly and I got super impatient and wanted more explosions so I switched back to Guardians. They started to die in earnest again (maybe if we keep killing them, they’ll get really sad and stop bringing them, 923 primary Guardians e’rry day). Suddenly two NoHo Moroses land and they finish off one of the Bhaals. They also find ANOTHER Exhale CS pilot sitting within 10km of a dread, not moving. BLAP. Down one Abso.

All in all, the allied forces lost two HICs, a Hurricane, a Proteus and an ECM Tengu, totalling ~2.3 billion ISK. Exhale and Starbridge dropped us 4.5 billion in loot alone. Their total losses exceed 30 billion ISK, and a few killmails are not in the main report but are instead here. The phantom capitals from Starbridge never appeared and we held and looted the field.

In closing, gf gf Sheppard

Thanks to everyone, including NorCorp and Temnava for coming together so quickly and making this op go the way we wanted. Great job to everyone in AHARM for following my primaries. Also thanks to my girlfriend who was watching and listening for both fights today and laughed every time I said “get on the hole, no more mass through the hole, get through the hole, etc,” and really laughed when I called “mrparty” as primary.

Props to Exhale and Starbridge for bringing the fight. At least one Exhale pilot stuck in a pod in Nova was escorted out to High Sec after combat had finished.

So two of us were chilling out today, neither of us having work. We were watching Aliens: Origin on Netflix. It’s awful, don’t ever watch it. Anyway, our phones go off telling us that there are hostiles in Nova.

We get on comms and Sonic tells us that he was challenged to a 2v2 (including an expressly agreed upon stipulation of no ECM) by some dudes in Nova. He had scouted the chain, and the situation looked on the up-and-up, so he and Sakic got into Lokis, but then changed into Proteuses. The two bros offering the duel said they had to reship.

Sonic sends Billy to do a headcount and lo and behold, 2 Drakes, a Hurricane, 2 Guardians, a Sacrilege, a Scimitar, a Falcon, and a Rook (the Rook being one of the original duel challengers) are lurking down the chain. Sakic and Sonic bail, not being baddies, and Sonic informs the dishonorable dogs that they will soon be evicted (this will be dealt with!)

Nonetheless, they land their gang on the C5/Nova and sit there, as though expecting Sonic and Sakic to take the bait. In the meantime, however, we’ve formed a gang of about 10 people and are waiting in our towers. With a cry of “HONOURRRRRRR,” Sonic warped his Archon, M.D. triage carrier to the C5. We land and jump through. The bubble goes up, and I start calling targets. The Falcon and Rook go down pretty hard (also note the pure Minmatar jammers, completely shattering any straws for them to grasp with regard to their intent in the “duel”). A bunch of them scatter but points and webs were spread decently, and we managed to get a good batch of kills. Their logi was out at around 50km and bailed in terror of our facemelting DPS. In total, we scored 5 kills and sent them running.

As it turns out, pyshc and I were just making fun of them this morning for a terrible promo video, and discussing how much we wanted to kill them.

Regardless, excellent response time to everyone involved, sorry to psycher for being jammed the entire fight by the Falcon/Rook and we’ll be seeing the folks from The Imperial Senate real soon.

Earlier today, Feday and Morb were out scanning for general purpose and PvP possibilities. They scanned down 3 systems into a class 5, and Feday sees a lot of ships on scan: Hulks, Brutix, a Rorqual, and other random hulls. Sneaky as he could be, Feday finds a group of ships away from the POS, discovers that they are mining, and gets a lock on a Hulk. Morbius is patiently standing by while Feday warps to and tackles the Hulk. After pointing the Hulk, Feday fires up his propulsion mod and starts ramming the Rorqual while going to town and popping the Hulk. Feday changes his point to the Rorqual and pops the Hulk pilot’s pod, as well.

All the while, Morb is heading back to get other people because there was no way Feday was going to take down a capital with just a Tengu. I want to stress that without Morbius we would not have gotten this kill! He grabbed me, Robert, and Victor, and fleet warped us to each hole.

We warp in and just start pounding the hell out of the Rorqual. We figure that he must have run out of cap boosters because we didn’t see him boost once after Victor landed and started neuting…fail on his part. The Rorqual went down in about 3-5 mins, and the pod warped off instantly via ctl Q, we think. A few mins later, Feday saw a pod on scan near the belt where we killed the guys, and he proceeded to scan it down. Sure enough, the Rorqual pilot is sitting in his pod off grid, so Feday does what he does best and pops the pod.

That should make up for any losses we have had on the killboards lately, besides, how many Rorqual kills do you see in WHs? 🙂 All in all good kills and a good day.

Again thanks to Morb for all your work man, could not have done it without you, and I am sorry you couldn’t make it onto the kill mails, but without you the kills wouldn’t have happened, period.

I come home from work and take a quick peek at the forums before starting to make dinner. Oh look, what is this thread in ALL CAPS? Carrier + 5 Caldari Navy Ravens are in the process of running a site, and we need to log in to kill them. Screw making dinner, it is time for revenge for Slumber’s carrier loss.

I log into vent and fire up Eve. Only 4 people on; not a good sign. I get in game and start to help get people organized. Luckily we are heading into US TZ primetime, and we get a bunch of folks logging in. We also get a bunch of guys who read aka’s forum post coming back, and 30 minutes later we have a gang of 14-15 people all at the Static WH, on the Exodus side.

We send Kirian in to find the hostiles. He tracks them down to a magnetometric site, and we try to figure out on what wave they are working. Initially, we think they are on the 2nd wave, and Kirian comes back with some bookmarks. We then send him back in and discover that they are on the last wave, and only have a few ships left. Oh crap, we need to hurry. Merk orders the fleet to jump in, and tells us to hold cloak, though he was slightly late with the second order and we have one guy who uncloaks. He quickly jumps back into Exo, but apparently the hostiles got nervous, because they start to warp away from the site.

Initially, I thought that might have actually been an OK turn of events, because then we might have been able to catch their carrier. We all warp to the site and find it empty of hostiles. Crap! We quickly warp to the other WH in system – a C3 – and put up a bubble, but the hostiles are all at a safespot or something. Kirian starts probing them down and gets a hit on the carrier. We all warp to him, but the carrier warps off. For some reason, he warped to another safespot that was only 2000km away…so Kirian quickly probes him down again. We warp to him, but the carrier warps off again. When we land, however, one of the CNRs is still there, so we go after it. One of the hictors pops a bubble, and we start shooting the CNR. Suddenly, another CNR warps in. And another. And another. And another. And the Carrier. Yay, we got them all to come and fight!

They all start popping smartbombs, and wrecks start appearing. Not their wrecks though. Uh oh. 3 of them target my Curse, which was already hurting from the smarties. I start aligning, but I am too late, and they pop my Curse. Luckily I am out of smartie range, and manage to get out of the bubble and warp back to the Exo WH. Unfortunately, 5 other pilots don’t make it out, and we have 5 guys podded. Things are looking grim.

Finally some good news: a Proteus and the remaining Hictors are still alive and don’t even seem to be taking that much damage. I make it back to Exo and get in my Carrier. If they want a fight, I am going to bring one. Folks in the little ships warp off, and I jump into the C6. I assign fighters to Merk in the Proteus and warp to the hostiles at 10km. As soon as I land, I send in the fighters and start repping friendlies. At this point, we start being smart about the bubbles. The Hictors all switch to infinite points, and the hostiles have no points; they can’t lock us down. If someone is taking more damage than I can rep they can just warp off. We set up a rotation for the Hictors, and they periodically flip off their infinite point so I can rep them. We have all of the hostiles locked down at least, and seem to be in a sort of stalemate.

People start switching into Neut BSes. Rogue Merlin switches into his DPS Paladin. We try targeting the Carrier; we try the BSes, and we can’t break the carrier’s tank or RR. At this point, all our jammers have been popped. I log in my alt – who has Caldari BS 3 – to fly the PVE Scorp I have in my hangar. Slight complication: my alt doesn’t have Electronic Warfare trained, but luckily I have it injected, so I start training it. 15 minutes later I bring in the Scorp, but can’t jam the carrier because it is in triage mode. Well, he has to run out of fuel sometime, right? All of a sudden, one of the CNRs disappears. WTF? Apparently, they logged the CNR pilots out. We concentrate fire on one of the CNRs that we managed to nearly kill before, and seem to be able to slowly take it down. We pop that one, and start on another one. That one disappears, so we target a new one. We manage to get one more CNR before they all go, and now it is just the carrier, and he is tanking all we can dish out.

We get some great news. Avatar Penguinkind has been scanning the C3 and found a highsec exit 1 jump from Rens. Allamarr’s characters had all been podded back to empire and they jump into stealth bombers and other DPS ships and rejoin the fight. The carrier is now slowly dropping. Just before he pops, he jettisons a Buzzard. After his carrier popped, he jumped in the Buzzard and tried to make his escape. We pop the Buzzard and hold down his pod. Everyone activates some mod (Neuts, ECM, etc.) on the pod to get in on the killmail. We even wait for a few folks to come back in from empire, and then pop the pod.

We loot the wrecks and also go loot the mag site which they had kindly cleared for us. We have to take a few BSes back to highsec to fit back into Exo, but made it back in the end.

Total time elapsed was about 2.5 hours of fighting, plus another 30 minutes of getting people back into Exo.

At some point someone asked about doing a sleeper op after we finished up, and I said, “We just did one, look at the mag site we cleared.”

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October 21, 2009 – by Two step
prepared for publication by Cerulean Fire

I was tooting around Erila still bloodthirsty after we slaughtered a Drake earlier, and I ran into some chatter from the locals. A quick background check revealed mixed corporations and backgrounds. After some provoking, I managed to get a Drake to warp in on me. Quickly engaging, I call in for backup, but before I realize it I’ve got an entire fleet warping in on top of my Wolf. Quickly calling off the reinforcements, I warp my pod to safety.

After making it back to our home WH, I call a fleet together and pass leadership to Ace. In total we have a Guardian, Domi, Claymore, Taranis, Falcon, Apoc, and Malaurus watching in a cov ops. We send in the Dominix as bait on the gate to the system where one of the hostile pilots is currently in space, throw out some sentry drones, and wait. I see a Falcon jump in and warp off toward the sun, then a Raven jumps.

I played a little musical warps with the Raven, then warped to the gate and dropped some Ogres. The Raven warped in, we locked each other, then he flew head-first into me. Following directions, I began to lead him off the gate. Soon after, his buddies warped in, and I had over half a dozen ships attacking the Dominix.

Now that the trap was sprung, our fleet jumped in through the wormhole and warped into the action. The Guardian was the first ship on scene, and was quickly set as the primary target. Unfortunately for our hostile gang, the combination of energy transfers and remote repping from the two ships stopped both their energy neutralizers and guns from doing any damage. Once the rest of our fleet jumped in it was game over, and we took down the Prophecy and locked down the Domi while his friends abandoned him. The Domi wormed his way to the gate, jumping to his inevitable doom with Concord.

After a few minutes on the gate, we were just about ready to pull out, but kept disruptors ready in case they tried to escape through it. Ace was in the middle of telling the fleet to warp back to the WH to head home when one of the Ravens jumped back in, and as the fleet engaged, the gate continued to activate. By the time I arrived, we had a Falcon, Geddon, and two Ravens at the gate (probably more… I don’t remember). I quickly launched my sentries and began firing at the called targets. First up was the Raven, who went down promptly. After that we got a quick point on the Geddon, who henceforth fell to his doom. The rest didn’t want to come back to play, and after a few minutes waiting for further retaliation while we scooped up and salvaged, we warped home.

Really need a big shout out to Malaurus; without his eyes and ears we would not have been able to keep an eye on their movements. Great scouting! Great response and great teamwork. Aside from the lone wolf, we suffered no losses with the fleet.